It appears that Australia's response to intensifying extreme weather events remains at the bottom of the national agenda, as climate change barely rated a mention in the Federal Budget.

Climate Council Acting CEO Dr Martin Rice said it was disappointing the Federal Government’s 2018 Budget had appeared to ignore climate change, despite the nation’s greenhouse gas pollution levels continuing to rise for more than three consecutive years.

“Australia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the developed world, with worsening extreme weather events including severe heatwaves, supercharged storms, heavy rainfall, flooding, droughts and bushfires.”

“Australia is at risk of further cementing its reputation as a global laggard when it comes to slashing growing greenhouse gas pollution levels and tackling climate change. We cannot continue to sit on our hands, while nations like New Zealand and France show real climate leadership.”

"Australia must rollout credible climate and energy policy that ramps up our transition to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technology, while moving away from our polluting fossil fuel past. The only thing standing in our way is political will.” (Climate Council media release, 9/5/2018)

Our biggest climate error

Ross Gittins, writing in The Age, also reports that after combing through the budget's fine print he finds that its thousands of pages make almost no mention of climate change. ('Our biggest climate error', 30/5/2018)

Gittins says, "I fear that history won't be kind to the present generation. We've known of the scientificevidence for human-caused global warming since the late 1980's. Since then the evidence has onlystrengthened. And by now we have the evidence of our own senses of hotter summers and autumns andwarmer winters, plus more frequent extreme weather events. And yet as a nation we procrastinate."

Gittins states, "The biggest mistake we've made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about globalwarming into a party-political issue, and to do so merely for their own short-term advantage. The initialmotives may have been short-term, but the adverse effects have been lasting."

"Global warming used not to be, shouldn't be and doesn't have to stay a right-versus-left issue. In Europe it is bipartisan. Margaret Thatcher was a vocal fighter for action on climate change, and the Conservative Party is anti-denial to this day."

Gittins concludes by saying, "But we can't put all the blame on short-sighted politicians and cronycapitalism. If enough of us did more to voice our disapproval, the pollies would change their tune very quickly. And we'd have a more convincing story to tell our grandchildren when they want to know what we did in the climate war."​John Lloyd